Unfortunately, we could not fit all of the bad behavior into one post. We will need at least four more posts to get it all covered, certainly a sad commentary on what passes for leadership in Washington and elsewhere within our politics today:
1) Let's start today with a former governor from my home state of New Jersey. Jim McGreevey was the 52nd governor of New jersey but was forced to resign in 2004 after admitting lying about an extramarital affair with an Israeli citizen.
One disgusting aspect of the affair was that by naming his lover as the homeland security interface for the state government of New Jersey, he placed the citizens of New Jersey in potential danger from terrorist attacks since the FBI and Department of Homeland Security were forbidden to share its intelligence information with non-citizens, temporarily leaving the safety of New Jersey citizens in the dark relative to the latest intelligence information.
2) Let's stay in New Jersey and talk about a former U.S. Senator, Robert Torricelli. After getting elected to the Senate from New Jersey in 1996, he was forced to withdrawal from a reelection effort in 2002 after it came to light that he knowingly received illegal campaign donations from a North Korean businessman.
His problems continued in 2007 when he was again the subject of controversy in 2007 when it was revealed that he spent some of the $2.9 million left over from his Senate campaign on donations to political candidates with ties to his business interests.
3) But can New Jersey really hold a candle to Illinois when it comes to political slime and corruption. First, three out of the past five governors of Illinois are currently or have already done prison time for their convictions on numerous counts of kickbacks, corruption, etc.
But consider the following news item from the March 2, 2012 issue of The Week magazine, reporting on a Chicago Tribune article: since 1976, 1,531 public officials from the Chicago area have been convicted of corruption. This simple math works out to the following, depressing conclusions:
•On average, more than one Chicago area public official was convicted every week for 27 years in the Chicago area for corruption.
•These are CONVICTIONS, not arrests, no indictments, but CONVICTIONS.
•This conviction rate was only in the Chicago area, it did not include the entire state of Illinois or any other sub part of Illinois, just the Chicago area.
This number does obviously not include those corrupt public officials that got away with their crimes and corruption.Very depressing but a simple math explanation of why our government at all levels, is ineffective, inefficient, and a disgrace: those that are in office are ineffective and inefficient because they are looking out for only their self interest which makes them a disgrace relative to being a public servant. Hats off to Illinois politicians: they do corruption better than anywhere else in the country.
4) In a July 1, 2009 Washington Post article, U.S. Senator Sen. Daniel Inouye's Senate staff directly contacted Federal Treasury regulators to ask about the bailout application of an ailing Hawaii bank that Inouye had helped to create and into which he has invested the bulk of his personal wealth.
The bank, Central Pacific Financial, was not a prime candidate for a Treasury program designed to support healthy banks. The bank's losses were depleting its capital reserves and its primary regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., already had decided that it didn't meet the rules for receiving a favorable recommendation for a bailout.
Nonetheless, two weeks after the inquiry from Inouye's office, Central Pacific announced that the Treasury would inject $135 million into the ailing bank. Coincidence or corruption, I'll let you decide.
5) Apparently, if you are a member of the U.S.Congress, you are not allowed to receive direct cash gifts or many other kinds of gifts from unions, businesses, lobbyists, etc. These types of gifts are seen as potential bribes to get legislators to vote favorably on pending legislation relative to the gift givers, even if it is not in the best interests of the American public. I wholeheartedly agree with this type of restriction.
However, as a member of Congress, you are allowed to participate in what is usually lucrative IPO offerings of a company, i.e. Congressional members can be on "the inside" when it comes to IPOs. According to a recent piece on "60 Minutes," no one in Congress has leveraged this loophole any better than Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House.
"60 Minutes" reported that Ms. Pelosi participated in upwards of nine corporate IPO opportunities, including one for the VISA IPO. VISA was somehow able get revenue restriction legislation delayed in the House Of Representatives when Pelosi was the Speaker of the House until after the IPO happened, resulting in a $100,000 profit for Ms. Pelosi's insider IPO participation in just a few days.
6) That same "60 Minutes" expose' reported that Congressman Spencer Bachus had successfully shorted the financial sector of the stock market just after getting warnings of a financial meltdown from the Secretary Of Treasury and head of the Federal Reserve Board, days before the information became public.
7) The "60 Minute" corruption piece also showed how former and current members of Congress, including Dennis Hasert, John Boehner, and Harry Reid, had also used their insider information positions to influence government behavior that benefited themselves personally.
8) According to an October 22, 2010 article in the Boston Herald by Dave Wedge, Massachusetts Congressman, Barney Frank, accepted $40,000 in reelection campaign donations from financial institutions that received bailout/TARP from the government. Two things make this action so despicable. First, Congressman Frank was at the center of the whole taxpayer bank bailout activity since he was chairman of the lead House of Representatives committee that was determining which institutions got how much taxpayer money, if any.
Second, in 2009, Mr. Frank told the Washington publication, Roll Call, that he "won't take any PAC money from banks that took TARP funds, nor would I take it from the top executive." However, according to Mr. Wedge's research and article:
•"According to Mr Frank's own campaign disclosure reports, he accepted a campaign donation of $7,000 from top executives from Bank Of America. Bank of America received $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds."
•He received $5,000 for Bank Of America's Federal PAC fund.
•He received $10,000 from the Bank Of New York Mellon Corporation which received $3 billion from the bailout fund.
•He received $2,000 from the Financial Services Roundtable PAC that includes representatives from TARP recipients Bank of America, JP Morgan, Chase, and Wells Fargo.
•He received $1,000 from U.S. Bancorp's PAC which received $6 billion in bailout funds.
9) According to an article in the June 30, 2009 edition of the St. Petersburg Times, Florida Congresswoman Ginny Waite-Brown invested in various banks based on non-public, secret information she received as a result of her membership on a House banking committee, the very committee that approved taxpayer bailout money for the very same banks the Congresswoman invested in.
10) Oh, we are just getting warmed up. Consider a whole slew of corruption and slime that came to light in a Business Week magazine article within their Spring, 2011 Government Insider Special report:
•New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez recently "championed" a plan to provide a temporary tax cut for small companies, a tax cut that would allow them to offset investments these companies might make in research on therapies to prevent and treat chronic diseases. Oh, by the way, the pharmaceutical industry in New Jersey just happened to contribute $434,043 to his 2010 reelection campaign and PAC.
•Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow sponsored a bill to give a tax rebate for consumers who purchase a gas/electric car or truck. The recently available Chevy Volt from General Motors certainly falls within this category. Oh, by the way, General Motors employees contributed $84,635 to Stabenow's reelection campaigns between 1995 and 2010.
•New York Senator Charles Schumer has been accused by other Congressional members of making a proposed tax on carried interest of private equity managers so difficult that the measure never was passed into law. Oh, by the way, Schumer has received $8.8 million from the security and investment industry since 1989, an industry that certainly includes private equity managers.
•Montana Senator Max Baucus obtained a provision in a recent farm bill "for tax exempt forestry conservation bonds to help purchase a 500 square mile patchwork of land owned by Plum Creek Timber." Oh, by the way, Plum Creek Timber has spent $3.7 million in lobbyists fees from 2006 to 2010 and its employees have contributed $19,100 to various Bachus reelection campaigns.
•Iowa Senator Charles Grassley has backed tax credits for domestic production of corn based ethanol and tariffs on imports of ethanol. It just so happens that his home state has 40 ethanol plants that generate 3.5 billion gallons of ethanol each year. Oh, by the way, Grassley received $290,250 in reelection campaign donations from agriculturally based PACs in his 2010 election run.
•Arizona Senator John Kyl is a major proponent of cutting taxes on inherited wealth, having been instrumental in the one year hiatus of the inheritance tax in 2010 and cutting a deal with Obama to keep the reinstatement of the tax at 35%. Oh, by the way, eliminating the estate tax is a major priority of the Club For Growth, which just has happened to donate $155,753 to the Senator's election campaigns since 1989.
•Texas Senator John Cornyn has opposed Obama's attempts to repeal oil and gas industry tax breaks besides opposing the President's ban on Gulf oil drilling. Oh, by the way, oil and gas industry components have given the Senator $1.7 million since 2001.
10) A Bloomberg.com report, that was reprinted in an October, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, reported that six dozen Congressional staffers had traded in stocks of companies that their political bosses were actively involved in. One staffer heavily traded in Bank Of American stock when he found out early, before the rest of the world, that Bank of America had successfully passed its so-called "stress test," i.e. it was deemed a healthy company. Conflict of interest, being a parasite off of a politician style.
11) Former Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, was caught in an adulterous affair with an Argentinian woman while still married and still governor. The sad, but funny part of this escapade was that for a while no one knew where the Governor was, giving the excuse he was out in the woods in the U.S. on vacation by himself when he was eventually caught in Argentina with his lover.
12) Former U.S. Senator from Nevada, John Ensign, resigned his Senate seat after it became known in June, 2009 that he had an affair with Cynthia Hampton, who was his political treasurer and was married to Doug Hampton, Ensign’s administrative assistant. The Ensign and Hampton families lived in the same neighborhood outside Las Vegas and were considered the best of friends.
In an interesting twist to the whole genre of political adultery, Ensign’s parents, wealthy casino executives, paid the Hamptons $96,000 in what was labeled gift income for tax purposes, the precise amount legally permissible without triggering taxes. Conincidence or cover-up money?
13) John Kerry is a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and probably one of the richest members of Congress, having married into the Heniz family fortune. Despite living in Massachusetts, serving the state of Massachusetts in the Senate, and being filthy rich, he decided to bypass his legal tax obligations to the state of Massachusetts relative to his yacht.
According to a July 23, 2010 Boston Herald news article by Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa, the Senator had recently purchased a luxury 76 foot, New Zealand built boat with "glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage." Obviously, this is not a row boat.
However, rather than berth the yacht in Massachusetts where he lives, wealthy Senator Kerry decided to berth the luxury ship in Newport, Rhode Island. This action allowed him to avoid paying almost $440,000 in Massachusetts sales tax and an annual Massachusetts excise of about $70,000. Rhode Island does not levy those types of taxes on boats. Nice example of non-integrity from a ranking member of the Washington political class.
14) Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri also has had some corruption and integrity problems. In late March, 2011, she announced she was selling her private plane and paying the owed back property taxes on it of over $287,000. Apparently in Missouri, an airplane owner has to pay property taxes on any plane that they own, something that the Senator did not do.
But that is not her only potential integrity problem. First, according to Politico, she also had to write a check to the Federal government when she billed her Senate expense account for purely political trips she made using the plane. This cost her to refund over $80,000 to the government.
Second, the plane is registered to a shell company that is registered as an LLC in the state of Delaware, a state that does not charge property taxes on private planes. Was this an attempt to shelter the plane from Missouri property taxes? Given that the Senator lives in Missouri, is a Senator from the state of Missouri, used to work for the state government of Missouri, and keeps the plane in a hangar in Missouri, it certainly gets suspicious when her plane gets registered in Delaware.
Finally, the Senator served as the state of Missouri auditor from 1999 to 2007 so claiming ignorance of the state laws on property taxes is not a viable defense. Makes you wonder how a smart, educated, politically savy individual could forget or neglect to pay over a quarter of a million dollars of property taxes. Corruption or incompetence, neither being a good adjective to describe a U.S. Senator.
In a final bit of irony, earlier in 2011, McCaskill signed on as a co-sponsor of Senate legislation that would fire Federal employees if they are “seriously delinquent” in paying their own Federal taxes. Looks like maybe we can add hypocrite onto the charges of incompetent or corrupt.
Ashleigh Brilliant once insightfully said: "I either want less corruption in government or more of a chance to participate in it." Based on just the two past days of political class corruption, it appears most of politicians opted for the participation option offered by Ms. Brilliant. The sleaze train of corruption continues rolling along tomorrow.
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The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.
The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom
http://www.cato.org/
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http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/
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